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Skin balm aids cancer patients

Denise Lauzon makes a product called Chemocare Balm out of the Elgin Business Resource Centre. She says the product may help some chemotherapy patients with dry and cracked skin on their hands and feet. (Laura Broadley/Times-Journal)

Denise Lauzon’s passion for skincare has been a long time in the making - 32 years to be exact. So when a friend of the family was going through chemotherapy treatments and suffering from severely dry and cracked skin on his hands and feet, she knew she had to step in. After he tried Lauzon’s product he didn’t want to use anything else.

That’s how Chemocare Balm came to be. It’s an all-natural product meant to help chemotherapy patients who have dry skin on their hands and feet. Amongst other things, the balm is made out of beeswax, sunflower oil, vitamins D, C and E, which helps to create a barrier to keep moisture in the skin.

Lauzon, who makes the balm with her daughter Nicole, soon started to bring the balm to the hospital for other patients to sample.

“I didn’t have a label. I just stuck it in a jar,” Lauzon said.

When Lauzon made the first batch of Chemocare Balm she didn’t know it would blossom from there into something bigger.

“We just started with the drug stores locally,” Lauzon said.

Lauzon approached Yurek’s Pharmacy in St. Thomas. Pharmacy manager Steve Bond decided to give it a try and sell it. They were the first pharmacy on board, but certainly not the last.

“It’s a local company. When I talked to the owner of the company she had told me about how they were using this for patients with severely dry, cracking skin that were going through chemotherapy,” Bond said.

Bond then spoke to the hospital and they didn’t have a way of carrying the product, so Yurek’s Pharmacy decided to carry it.

“They (the hospital) felt that it was a product that could benefit patients so we thought, we like to support local companies, and we think it’s a great product. It’s helped quite a few people,” Bond said.

Yurek’s Pharmacy sells Chemocare Balm in its St. Thomas and London locations.

“It has been extremely well received. The patients that buy it find that it works well,” Bond said.

Chemocare Balm is now available in pharmacies across London, St. Thomas and Aylmer. Lauzon is also working with other pharmacies to bring the balm even further.

Lauzon is also donating a portion of the proceeds to the Mike Condie Foundation, which supports local cancer patients.

For a few years Lauzon has been using the St. Thomas Elgin Business Resource Centre’s facilities for her business, Metamorphosis and now to manufacture Chemocare Balm.

“The EBRC has helped me out since the very beginning with learning new skills and teaching us how to run our business from the ground up,” Lauzon said.